Around January 30, 1895

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the successful patent medicine business, the most popular product was Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. Pinkham claimed to treat the worst cases completely from her Vegetable Compound. This claim comes from Victorian trading card of Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound that is found in many different styles. Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound was made...

On the evening of Monday March 4, 1895, the Fifty-third Congress came to an end. The headlines that ran in the New York Times that day took the opportunity to let lose a harsh critique on that particular Congress. They read: A DISGRACE TO AMERICA, FAITHLESS TO PARTY AND COUNTRY, and, NO ONE REGRETS THE DISSOLUTION. The prestigious newspaper commented on the corruption and ineptitude of the political...

The New York Times reported that the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs was on the verge of dissolution on Monday March 4, 1895. National League Baseball was founded slightly before Major League Baseball. The Major League was founded in the early 1900s and since then the two leagues have competed in an annual series of games called the World Series. At the time of the reported...

On March 7, 1895 an African American reporter wrote quite a compelling article in New South, a local black newspaper in Beaufort, South Carolina. The article told the story of a slave boy abandoned at a young age who had to scrounge for food in order to survive. The author explained the many hardships and troubles this black youth experienced throughout his life. As the boy grew older he learned...

On March 9th, 1895, the Times and Registrar published an article detailing a new hypodermic syringe. Its sleek design, metal casing surrounding a sanitary inner glass chamber, was the newest in medical technology. A screw-on needle kept the syringe itself from being dangerous, decreasing the chance of sticks and accidents. Though the metal casing itself could be used many times,...

The town did not look on Thomas J. Penn, a prominent white man, with favor as they suspected him of committing a rape and two murders. In Danville, Virginia, Penn raped ten year old, defenseless Lina Hanna. Penn, her owner, badly injured Hanna, an African American, who was very lucky to have survived. The rape was not the only disaster in this story. The biggest mystery of all was the disappearance...

On December 16, 1894 a man in Richmond County, Virginia, recorded the weight of hogs that he killed. He killed over 4000 pounds of hogs, but gave away 400 pounds to a friend. Perhaps the meat would provide for his family throughout the cold winter, or he might sell it to a local market. Either way, livestock was an important alternative to crops, which were difficult to depend on as they often had...

In the summer of 1894 there was hope for a new way of life in the reconstruction of the South. E.B. Gaston took a group of people down to Baldwin County, Alabama on the Mobile Bay. A colony free from all forms of private monopoly, a colony where working people could come together to form a single-tax community was founded. Members of the Fairhope Industrial Association were all followers of economist...

In 1894, a rendezvous of committed single taxers converged upon Mobile Alabama. A “light breeze was blowing out of the north, the air was crisp, and the promise was for a fair day.” Twenty-eight people; seven couples, nine children, and five single men mostly strangers to each other arrived from across the United States on the word of their leader...

Emigration of African-Americans back to Africa was not a new idea in 1895. In fact, many of the colonizing missions were quite experienced by 1895 for the missions had taken place since the early nineteenth century. White Americans felt that blacks needed to be removed from society. Prior to the Civil War, many states, including Virginia, had laws which stated that free blacks had to petition...